Widescreen Gaming Forum

As for recording the game, I use in-gamer rendering where possible. World in Conflict, Call of Duty 4, all Source-based games, and others have built-in renderers. You play back a demo and it will dump the frames in non-realtime. :)

I thought that must be the case. Didn't realize WiC had demo recording/rendering functionality. For the highest quality that is certainly the way to go. Do you participate in the machinima community, by chance?

The Vdub guide I put together was an alternative to Fraps, Xfire, etc--focusing on realtime, on-the-fly recording. In many ways it is superior. For example, if I had recorded the FEAR demo with Fraps, the screenshot above would show 30fps for every stat, since Fraps locks the game to the capture framerate. Vdub doesn't leash the beast any more than necessary. ;)

The one major downside is that hardware overlays frequently cause flickering in fullscreen recordings, hence my question.

And I don't know about hardware overlays.

Thanks anyway. I'll continue the search. ;)

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VirtualDub Game Recording Guide | BFME2 & RotWK Widescreen/Triplehead Mods

I don't participate in any community for videos. I'm more of a technical advisor. ;)



Well, the reason why Fraps limits the game to the recording speed is so that you don't get tearing. It pulls the frames directly out of your video card's framebuffer. Capturing it in other ways may actually capture the tearing. So at least if you're going to record that way, make sure you turn VSync on in the game so that you minimize tearing.

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I don't participate in any community for videos. I'm more of a technical advisor. ;)

And a good one at that. ;) Someday I'd like to see one of the avisynth scripts you use for video processing.

make sure you turn VSync on in the game so that you minimize tearing.

IIRC, isn't tearing a monitor problem? As in, the whole frames delivered to the monitor by the graphics card are out of sync with the monitor's refresh rate, so the monitor ends up "mixing frames", aka, tearing. Given the broad range of fps reported by the FEAR demo it should be a prime candidate for tearing when Vsync is off. I frame-stepped through the capture I made and didn't find the problem anywhere (and haven't noticed it in other recordings).

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VirtualDub Game Recording Guide | BFME2 & RotWK Widescreen/Triplehead Mods

Tearing doesn't really have anything to do with the display. It has more to do with the refresh rate that you have set.

Your video card renders to framebuffers. When VSync is on, it will sync the drawing to the refresh rate that you set in Windows. However, when VSync is disabled, the video card tries to render as many frames as possible. When it renders a new frame, it will overwrite the old frame.

What happens here is that when the frame leaves the framebuffer to be displayed, it might have pulled a frame that was only partially overwritten. This is the tearing you see.

I hope that makes sense. ;)

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What happens here is that when the frame leaves the framebuffer to be displayed, it might have pulled a frame that was only partially overwritten. This is the tearing you see.

I hope that makes sense. ;)

Interesting. Well, as long as it doesn't affect my videos I'll be a happy camper. :D

A couple more tests:

HL2 Lost Coast Stress Test (1440x900-30fps):


CSS Stress Test (1440x900-30fps):

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VirtualDub Game Recording Guide | BFME2 & RotWK Widescreen/Triplehead Mods

Excellent guide, solid instructions, working solution! Thanks a bunch. Now I can send Fraps to /dev/null (I would wish but OS restricts me!)

Excellent guide, solid instructions, working solution! Thanks a bunch. Now I can send Fraps to /dev/null (I would wish but OS restricts me!)

You're welcome. Glad to hear it's working for you. Did you get it working for fullscreen games? If so, what video card, driver, and OS are you using?

I now remember that the guide is in need of an update for a couple things. More stuff for the todo list....

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VirtualDub Game Recording Guide | BFME2 & RotWK Widescreen/Triplehead Mods

You're welcome. Glad to hear it's working for you. Did you get it working for fullscreen games? If so, what video card, driver, and OS are you using?

I now remember that the guide is in need of an update for a couple things. More stuff for the todo list....

No, no fullscreen for the game I tested it on, Company of Heroes. When I tried FS I just got a black sheet, nothing else. However, the windowed mode is working without an issue.

As for the guide, I guess that update you are talking about is due. Codec options have expanded tremendously and I would like to see some mention of disk i/o optimization and audio/video timing, offered by virtualdub. I had some issues getting the best settings for my disk and when I tried recording overlapping audio, in addition to the in-game audio, I got weird audio re-sampling and had to disable video/audio sync entirely.

Once again, great guide!

Cheers

I apologize for posting late...over one year, but I never really have the need for recording, until now :wink:

Anyway, I have similiar problem recording like eZ` (even for desktop) back in my home desktop. However, with this "lite" laptop I am able to record video game smooth and properly.

The irony is that my home desktop was capable and decent enough for games that were released until at least 2008, while this "lite" laptop struggled heavily when attempting to run games like World in Conflict and Oblivion. I had to use the ol' Battlefield 1942 for the purpose of recording with this laptop.

All right, I figure all these chats are worthless without any hardware specs, so here they are:

The Desktop PC (good for gaming):
Intel Pentium 4 2.6 GHz
2 GB RAM
ATI HIS X800 PRO 256 MB
Sound Blaster Audigy
1 HDD with capacity 80 GB (5 GB Free)
Windows XP Professional 32 Bit
Resolution 1280 x 768

The "lite" laptop:
ASUS F9S
Intel Core2 Duo T7500 @ 2.2GHz
3 GB RAM
NVidia GeForce 8400 M G 128 MB
1 HDD with capacity 120 GB (partitioned into two, 55.8 GB and 48 GB, each with over 4 GB free)
Windows Vista Home Premium 32 Bit
Resolution 1280 x 800

I use similar setting as the guide in GeneralAdmision.com site (with 30 fps and codec other than MJPEG) for both. The PC desktop however, lagged heavily as if it was being held by unseen forces (or in other words, failed miserably) to record even the very desktop screen itself! :shock: On the other hand, the laptop could record smoothly even when at the same time I have a Firefox opened with dozens of tabs and more (tray) applications running. It could even then record Battlefield 1942 without any noticeable hiccup.

As for answer to some related questions...

Have you tried setting Vdub to use just one or 2 cores?

My Desktop PC is the ol' one core, but I doubt it has any effect with the slowing VirtualDub, or does it?

Anyone else capture successfully with an ATI card?

As you can see, it failed to "record properly" with an ATI card.

Any clues to what happened and is there any solution?

1 HDD with capacity 80 GB (5 GB Free)

This would be my first guess as the culprit. One drive is handling OS/Game/recordings tasks by itself. More importantly, you have very little free space available for something as demanding as game recording. My guess is that the 5GB free space is probably fragmented, which could easily account for the problem you describe.

Try freeing some more space on the hard drive, at least 10GB free, but more is better. After this run a defrag on the drive and make sure that the free space gets defragged. If Windows' defrag tool doesn't do this, try http://www.defraggler.com for a freeware app. Once the hard drive is in better shape, try a game recording with an older, less-demanding game and see how it goes. Ideally, a second hard drive would be the best option.

What codec are you using? If it is high bitrate--such as a lossless codec--that could be an issue. I'm guessing an 80GB drive is rather old and probably not the fastest on the planet; it may not be able to keep up with the bitrate needed for recording, especially if there is fragmentation. A codec that does interframe (such as Divx/Xvid) or other CPU-intensive encoding could also be a problem. You desktop P4 CPU is old and weak compared to the C2Duo in the laptop--it might be choking on the task of running a game and encoding video at the same time. Aside from the graphics card, your laptop is clearly a superior machine compared to the desktop.

Let me know how things work out.

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VirtualDub Game Recording Guide | BFME2 & RotWK Widescreen/Triplehead Mods